Snow flurries dancing through the air, the sweet scent of hot chocolate brewing over the stove top, the sound of children laughing and playing outside. These are the sights and sounds that typically come to mind when a snow day is announced. But that title has been replaced with one slightly less picturesque: e-learning. 

During the 2021-2022 school year, District 203 joined school districts across the nation in replacing emergency snow days with asynchronous e-learning days. Now, in the event of an extreme weather emergency or other unusual scenarios that would typically call for a school cancellation, such as Election Day, students are expected to log on to their devices and complete the classwork teachers are required to assign. 

On Thursday, Jan. 22, District 203 announced an e-learning day for Friday, Jan. 23 due to the National Weather Service’s extreme cold warning. This recent experience begs the question: Are e-learning days really necessary? 

On the affirmative side, the obvious argument is maintained that if students participate in e-learning instead of completely canceling school, the day will not have to be made up at the end of the school year. 

But e-learning days may not be productive. With no real way to count attendance many students find themselves sleeping in and not completing their assignments. Students are viewing e-learning as an optional activity rather than a suitable alternative for a physical school day. Then, when students come back to school, teachers find themselves re-teaching e-learning day content or providing a work day to complete this unfinished work, which is simply unfair to students who did complete the work, and overall a waste of time. 

Furthermore, the type of work that teachers assign may actually be counterproductive to student learning. For many students, it is hard to adjust to an asynchronous learning environment and learn new content by themselves. Yet, some teachers assign an entirely new concept for students to teach themselves in the interest of further progressing through the curriculum. 

Because of this, when students go back to school, they find themselves feeling anxious and behind as they couldn’t comprehend material that was meant to be taught to them, not by them. While teachers are required to offer office hours to help confused students, most teachers schedule their Zoom blocks earlier in the mornings, when students often are engaging in well-deserved sleep. 

It’s not only the content of asynchronous work that is troubling, it’s the inconsistency in quantity. Some teachers assign no more than 10 minutes of coursework, while others seemingly cram days of essential learning into a single lesson. Honors and AP classes, teachers are inclined to assign more work than for an unweighted class. But this isn’t fair to students, either. On e-learning days, when a teacher isn’t present to clarify material, each subject should have relatively similar workloads, regardless of class difficulty. 

Stepping away from the high school environment, it’s important to recognize that elementary and middle schools in District 203 also participate in e-learning. While e-learning is definitely a practical measure for fast-paced high school curriculums, it’s rather unnecessary to force children to complete schoolwork on a day off. Elementary schoolers would rather be playing in the snow or watching TV; they shouldn’t be forced to sit on their Chromebooks and further contribute to the i-Pad kid crisis seen in youth today. It’s unreasonable that young students who aren’t even used to homework are required to complete online assignments independently.

But e-learning, theoretically, is not a deficient solution. While it may have its flaws, as listed above, the premise of avoiding make-up school days at the end of the school year is very appealing. It’s a practical use of time – when applied correctly – and students still benefit from a day of rest while essentially completing a “freebie” school day without physically having to attend school. 

The problem lies in making e-learning more effective. This starts with outlining clearer expectations for teachers assigning work, rather than an ambiguous “50 minute” time period. Instead of measuring learning in time, the requirements should center around whether the student is actually completing work that will enhance their understanding of the curriculum. On a similar note, students shouldn’t be expected to teach themselves new material; it’s not as if we are living in pandemic times. 

E-learning days may not evoke the warm nostalgia that snow days do, but their practical benefits leave them a viable alternative for keeping high school curriculums productive. They could be more effectively executed and  solve many of the problems outlined above.  Overall, e-learning days have their hassles, but our district is capable of implementing significant change with student feedback to positively combat the weather.